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The KLF

The KLF   (UK)

AKA : The Timelords, the JAMs
House group
Added : 24/01/2000
12687


The Black Room
The White Room Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Chill Out & Space
The White Room
Solid State Logik 1
This Is What KLF Is About
Burn The Beat
What Time Is Love
Kylie Said To Jason
What Time Is Love (Live at Trancentral)
3 A.M. Eternal
Make It Rain
Last Train To Trancentral
America : What Time Is Love?
Justified & Ancient
Down Town
Whitney Joins The J.A.M s
All You Need Is Love
What The Fuck Is Going On?
Shag Times
Doctorin' The Tardis
It's Grim Up North
The Magnificent
Waiting For The Rights Of Mu
Fuck The Millenium
86 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Latest The KLF news

02/09/2017 : Last August 23rd, 23 years after they put an end to their carreer, The KLF came back in an ice cream van for a signing (rather stamping) session of their newly released book "2023 The Trilogy", a dystopian fiction.

06/01/2017 : 23 years after they officially ceased activity, a teaser poster was published, suggesting that The KLF aka The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu could be preparing a comeback.

25/07/2014 : The KLF's classic 3AM Eternal was covered by People Of 'K' feat. Crystal, a cover project of Almighty records.

18/01/2013 : Despite being deleted over 20 years ago, a number of albums by The KLF appeared a few days ago on iTunes, Amazon UK and Spotify.

20/12/2011 : Almighty Records created a tribute project called People Of 'K' feat. Crystal to cover The KLF's biggest hits. After Justified And Ancient and Last Train To Trancentral, they just released What Time Is Love?.

08/08/2011 : The KLF's hit single 3AM Eternal was covered by Serge Devant ft. Taleen (Thanks to Dance Music News)

More news

 

The KLF albums

The Black Room The Black Room (Never released)
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The White Room Original Motion Picture Soundtrack The White Room Original Motion Picture Soundtrack 1988
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Chill Out & Space Chill Out & Space Feb 1990
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The White Room The White Room 4th Mar 1991
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Solid State Logik 1 Solid State Logik 1 1st Jan 2021
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The KLF singles

This Is What KLF Is About This Is What KLF Is About (Japan 3 CD box)  
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Burn The Beat Burn The Beat 5th Mar 1988  
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What Time Is Love What Time Is Love 17th Oct 1988  
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Kylie Said To Jason Kylie Said To Jason 31st Jul 1989  
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What Time Is Love (Live at Trancentral) What Time Is Love (Live at Trancentral) 30th Jul 1990  
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3 A.M. Eternal 3 A.M. Eternal 7th Jan 1991  
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Make It Rain Make It Rain Promo only Feb 1991  
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Last Train To Trancentral Last Train To Trancentral 22nd Apr 1991  
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America : What Time Is Love? America : What Time Is Love? Oct 1991  
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Justified & Ancient Justified & Ancient (featuring Tammy Wynette) 25th Nov 1992  
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Aliases - Records released under other names

Down Town The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu - Down Town 1987  
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Whitney Joins The J.A.M s J.A.M s - Whitney Joins The J.A.M s 1987  
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All You Need Is Love The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu - All You Need Is Love Feb 1987  
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What The Fuck Is Going On? The JAMs - What The Fuck Is Going On? (album) 15th Jun 1987  
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Shag Times The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu - Shag Times (album) 1988  
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Doctorin' The Tardis The Timelords - Doctorin' The Tardis 23rd May 1988  
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It's Grim Up North The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - It's Grim Up North 28th Oct 1991  
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The Magnificent One World Orchestra - The Magnificent 1995  
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Waiting For The Rights Of Mu Kopyright Liberation Front - Waiting For The Rights Of Mu 1997  
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Fuck The Millenium 2K - Fuck The Millenium 1997  
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The KLF biography

KLF means Kings Of The Low Frequency or Kopyright Liberation Front. The 2 producers Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty featured various rappers (such as Ricardo Da Force ) and vocalists. Trancentral was the name of their recording studio in the basement of a house located in 55 Jeffrey's Road, Stockwell, London which was also co-founder Jimmy Cauty's squat.

At the start of 1987 The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (the JAMs) released their debut single All You Need Is Love, an anti-AIDS anthem featuring large chunks of illegal sampling, to great underground success. The follow-up album, 1987: What The Fuck Is Going On? continued the sampling trend, and managed to get them sued by Abba - even travelling to Sweden to appeal to them directly could not change Abba's mind, and all copies of 1987 were (supposedly) destroyed. One of their infamous press released of the time said 'We'll make another LP before Christmas, after that fuck it!'

In 1988 they decided that they wanted a UK #1 single, so they wrote one. Masquerading as The Timelords, they took three records they hadn't written, put them together, and reached number one with Doctorin' The Tardis, inspired from Dr Who TV series. Gary Glitter was enlisted to help with the remixes. After that they published a book, 'The Manual: How To Have A Number One The Easy Way to tell everybody how it was done, and how they too could top the charts. It was reportedly used by the project Edelweiss to secure their hit Bring Me Edelweiss.

By 1989, the newly-renamed KLF began their influence on the growing underground club scene, with a Pure Trance series of records and now-club classics such as What Time Is Love? (# 5 in the UK, # 2 in Israel, top 40 in the USA) and It's Grim Up North (as the JAMs). What Time Is Love? was at first a minimalist instrumental track labelled "pure trance". It was then changed into a pop house track, enriched with raps by Isaac Bello and sampled Wanda Dee's voice ("I wanna see you sweat") from the single To the Bone, and re-released as a part of the Live at Trancentral series. Jimmy's (ex) wife Cressida appeared in the video, dressed in red and also contributed to backing vocals.

During 1990 and particularly 1991, they went on to have a succession of UK chart successes. In January, a reworked version of 1989 song 3:am Eternal, this time featuring raps by Ricardo da Force and vocals by soul singer P. P. Arnold, hit the stores. Even if it was subtitled "Live at the S.S.L.", it was actually recorded in studio, SSL referring to Solid State Logic mixing desk brand. The single was #1 in the UK, Denmark, Finland and Israel, #2 in Sweden, #3 in Spain and Australia, #5 in the USA. Then April 1991 saw the release of Last Train To Trancentral, once again a remake of the pure trance version released in 1990. Rap and narration were done by Ricardo da Force, while Black Steel performed the vocals. A Wanda Dee sample was also included, once again. It went #2 in the UK and was top 10 in the USA.

Then came another remake of What Time Is Love, a harder version, this time featuring vocals from Deep Purple ex-member Glenn Hughes, the riff from Motörhead's Ace of Spades and a spoken intro by narrator Scott Piering : America: What Time Is Love?. It came along with a B-side entitled America No More, an anti-war statement focusing on US foreign policy and the final track to be recorded by the KLF. Their most successful commercial album was the 1991 version of The White Room, supposedly the soundtrack to an unreleased road movie filmed in the Sierra Nevada.

End of 1991, they released a collaboration with country & western singer Tammy Wynette (famous for the hit Stand by Your Man), a remake of the album track Justified & Ancient, subtitled "Stand by The JAMs". It also featured Maxine Harvey singing the "All Bound for Mu Mu Land" part and went #1 in Sweden, Austria, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand and in Israel, #2 in the UK, Belgium, Switzerland and in Greece, top 20 in the USA. After this, the KLF received many phone calls from fading music stars asking for featurings to revive their careers. Exactly the opposite to the KLF's aim to subvert the music industry ! And maybe one of the causes the project stopped.

On February 12h 1992, they appeared on the Brit Awards in a collaboration with crust punk band Extreme Noise Terror, with whom they also worked on an also unreleased Black Room album. They performed a live version of 3 A.M. Eternal : a "violently antagonistic performance" in front of "a stunned music-business audience". Drummond and Cauty had first planned to throw buckets of sheep's blood over the audience, but were prevented from doing so (due to opposition from BBC lawyers and Extreme Noise Terror themselves). The performance was instead garnished by a limping, kilted, cigar-chomping Drummond firing blanks from an automatic weapon over the heads of the crowd. As the band left the stage, The KLF's promoter and narrator Scott Piering announced over the PA system that "The KLF have now left the music business". Later in the evening, the band dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe - bon appetit" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. New Musical Express magazine listed it at #4 in their "top 100 rock moments".

The retired KLF deleted all of their past releases and consequently raising the prices of original KLF material greatly. "The last grand gesture, the most heroic act of public self destruction in the history of pop" as qualified by the magazine Select. The KLF quickly became 'legend' and the mystery around their sudden departure from the music industry became an enduring mystery...

During 1994 they attracted media attention as the K Foundation, mostly notably for burning one million pounds on a remote Scottish island, and undermining the art world's respected Turner Prize (20,000 pounds for the best work of art) by awarding, on the same night as the Turner award was announced, their own award of 40,000 pounds for the worst work of art- to the same person...

In 1995 they contributed a two-minute track, The Magnificent, to the 'HELP' charity album. In 1996 Bill Drummond, co-wrote a book, Bad Wisdom, about the experience of taking an icon of Elvis to the North Pole. Since then many rumours about what they're up to have circulated...

1999 : they released one track under the name of 2K: Fuck The Millenium (a remix of What Time Is Love? featuring Acid Brass and incorporating elements of the hymn Eternal Father, Strong to Save), which entered top 40 in the in the UK only. They performed it once at London's Barbican Arts Centre, dressed like 2 elederly people in motorized wheel-chairs.

These activities were accompanied by the usual full page press adverts, this time asking readers "Fuck The Millennium: Yes/No?" with a telephone number provided for voting. At the same time, Drummond and Cauty also founded K2 Plant Hire, with plans to build a "People's Pyramid" from used house bricks; this plan never reached fruition

Bill Drummond continues to work as a writer and conceptual artist. Jimmy Cauty has been involved in several post-KLF projects including the music and conceptual art collective Blacksmoke and the electronic music group the Transit Kings, which saw him reunited with his former partner from The Orb, Alex Paterson.

The KLF were told to have released a live album in 2001 but actually it was just a bootleg. In January 2002 Muzik Magazine made a top 50 of best dance albums all time. Chill Out and The White Room both were in the list.

2010 : Bill Drummond continues to work as a writer and conceptual artist, with occasional appearances on radio and television. Jimmy Cauty has been involved in several post-KLF projects including the music and conceptual art collective Blacksmoke and, more recently, numerous creative projects with the aquarium and the L-13 Light Industrial Workshop based in Clerkenwell, London.

2011 : Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty appear to be making another comback under the name FLK. In June they played one concert dressed as cows.

2017 : in January, a teaser poster from K2 Plant Hire Ltd appeared. on August 23rd, 23 years after they put an end to their carreer, The KLF came back in an ice cream van for a signing session, not for a record, but for a book : "2023 The Trilogy", a sci-fi novel, "a utopian costume drama, set in the near future, written in the recent past".

Thanks to Shimon O'Hana for the charts positions
Thanks to Rogier Verkroost, Allyson, DJ Stakan and Iline (trancentral.ru) for the latest news

The KLF biography was last updated Wed, December 15th 2021

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DISCLAIMER : unless you see the artist's name among the credits of this biography, it was only created by gathering infos from the web and from fan sources. Sorry if, even if I did all verifications I could, some parts of the biography are false or lack accuracy. Please keep ini mind that I am alone running the site. If you are the artist himself or contributed to the project, please wait till I come back from holidays to submit corrections.



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